What is the place of history in the shaping of narratives in and about immigrant communities in New York City? Immigration is often told as a story that begins with rupture and ends with assimilation – of severing roots, and building new ties. Yet, so often in New York with an immigrant population of 3 million, there are a richer, more complex stories to be found, archived, and told. How do immigrant stories shape New York, the “majority-minority” city? Join the Center for International History for a panel discussion as we navigate the question of immigrant histories and the shaping of NYC — through film, through literature- academic, fictional and journalistic- through music, archiving, and activism.

The Chile Reader: National History and Global Context in the Age of Transnational History
A book launch for The Chile Reader: Culture, Politics, History (Duke University Press, 2013) coedited by Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, Thomas Klubock, Nara Milanich, and Peter Winn

Abstract: In the first half of the twentieth century, political emigres and exiles from India found themselves in a position to become the voice of a colonised and oppressed country before an audience comprising often sympathetic, if not always well-informed, citizens of various countries of the world in which they found themselves. The ways in which they found this voice had much to do with their ability to reframe the problem of India in terms intelligible to these audiences. In so doing, they also embarked on a process of self-education and ideational translation that was transformative of the ways of conceptualising India in the world, and the world for India. The various framings of India, sometimes by the same person for different audiences, is revealing of the ways in which existing and emerging languages of legitimation were mobilised, and affected the reframing of ‘India’ both at home and away from India, by those identified with India as a national entity as well as those foreign to it. The ways in which peripheral subjects speaking from and to the centres of world power were crucial elements in conceptualising the periphery for its own subjects at home is an important aspect of the mobilisation and movement of diverse ideas in the first half of the twentieth century. How did the persons move back and forth? How did this movement of ideas work? How were these transmitted? These questions take us past the themes of the limited or constrained agency of the native informant, towards a more dynamic model of moving ideas.

March 31, 2014REMOVER OF OBSTACLES: GANESH AND THE PERSISTENCE OF MYTHOLOGICAL GENRE IN HINDI CINEMA
Abstract: The mythological, the founding genre of Indian cinema, is one of its most innovative forms. In the colonial period, it promoted nationalist ideals while avoiding censorship through its association with religion and tradition. It is usually thought that the mythological genre declined in popularity in Hindi cinema in independent India, eclipsed by the social which foregrounded new ideas of Indianness, a concern which continued through the Bollywood films about the diaspora and the recent flourishing of the biopic. Yet the mythological, ignored by many writers and critics, who saw the massive success of JSM in 1975 as a freak occurrence, has continued as a popular form in Hindi cinema, notably children’s animated films, up to the present, also flourishing in other media ranging from television, to popular English fiction. This paper looks at Hindi mythological films about Ganesh, the Remover of Obstacles, in the wider context of the evolving genre, discussing his changing image while also examining the nature of his gajatva or ‘elephantness’.

The short documentary film, Wounds of Waziristan highlights the stories of those directly impacted by American drone attacks in Pakistan. Followed by a discussion with:

Madiha R. Tahir is the director of Wounds. She is an independent journalist whose work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, Vice, The National, Guernica, The New Inquiry, PRI and BBC’s “The World”, The Columbia Journalism Review, The Wall Street Journal, Democracy Now! Caravan, Global Post and other outlets. She is co-editor of a volume of essays Dispatches from Pakistan and is currently a doctoral candidate at Columbia University.

Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s Meet the Press. Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ for “developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.” She is the first co-recipient of the Park Center for Independent Media’s Izzy Award, named for the great muckraking journalist I.F. Stone. The Independent of London called Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! “an inspiration.” PULSE named her one of the 20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009. She is the author of The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings; Occupations, Resistance, and Hope, written with Denis Moynihan; Breaking the Sound Barrier; and, co-authored with her brother, journalist David Goodman, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times (2008), Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back (2006), and The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them (2004).

Manan Ahmed Asif is assistant professor of history at Columbia University. He is interested in the relationship between text, space and narrative. His areas of specialization include the political and cultural history of Islam in South and Southeast Asia, frontier-spaces and imperial and colonial historiography. He is involved in Digital Humanities projects that examine the relationship between space, location and text. Asif has also written extensively about the contemporary politics of Pakistan, collected in his book Where the Wild Frontiers Are.

Pakistan has been called a failing state and the most dangerous country on earth. Western media has spotlighted the militancy and the duplicity of the Pakistani state towards its American partner. Yet, stories about the Pakistani victims of the “war on terror” remain scant even though thousands of Pakistanis have been bombed, disappeared, detained and displaced. This panel will examine the relationship between the representation of Pakistan in the media and the “war on terror.” It will discuss alternative models to pursue and publish ethical journalism.

Asim Rafiqui is aphotojournalist who has been investigating human rights issues in Pakistan. His most recent project covers the lives and stories of Pakistani prisoners in the US prison at Bagram. Rafiqui is also a fellow at the Open Society Foundation

Sarah Belal is a prominent Pakistani human rights lawyer who has been working to get Bagram prisoners released. Her organization Justice Project Pakistan has been litigating on behalf of families of prisoners. Belal is also a fellow with the UK based human rights organization, Reprieve.

Madiha Tahir is an independent journalist who recently produced a short documentary, Wounds of Waziristan, about survivors of drone attacks in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas. She is co-editor of a collection of essays, Dispatches from Pakistan and a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University.

Saadia Toor is the author of State of Islam: Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan. She is an associate professor of sociology at CUNY and works on populist movements and, feminism and religion, in Pakistan.

Co-sponsored by The Sevellon Brown Fund, Columbia Journalism School Photojournalism Dept., Center for International History

This Graduate History Student Conference will focus on the spaces where individuals and groups come into contact with the institutions and symbols of the state. We will ask how such spaces of citizenship have been constructed, delimited, and at times rejected, and how the terms of interaction and negotiation in these spaces have been defined and re-defined. In addition, we will look at the moments when individuals or groups have been excluded from citizenship, and when citizens and non-citizens have created alternative venues to mobilize and define their identity beyond the reach of Latin American nation-states.

As part of the 1949 UNESCO Human Rights Exhibition seminar series, the Institute for the Study of Human Rights presents

Human Rights on the World Stage

A Talk by Sharon Sliwinski, Associate Professor of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario

With Commentary by Rosalyn Deutsche, Adjunct Professor of Art History, Barnard College

Date and time: Monday 9 December 2013 at 6.15pm

Location: 602 Hamilton, Columbia University

The 1949 UNESCO Human Rights Exhibition operated both as cultural document and as educational implement. Sharon Sliwinski proposes to highlight some of the tensions involved in transposing human rights into these terms. What will be under particular scrutiny are the fantasies that drive such educational campaigns, namely, that proper knowledge will bring about social progress. Professor Sliwinski will address the historical lineage of this fantasy, as well as its persistence in the present in form of “sites of conscience.”

This is the third event in a seminar series revolving around the largely unknown 1949 UNESCO Human Rights Exhibition – the first international event that sought to visually represent the history, meaning and content of the rights set out in the UDHR. The series will lead up to a new display of the exhibition archive at Columbia’s Buell Hall Gallery in April 2014. For more information, visit www.exhibithumanrights.org.

This seminar series is made possible with the support of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, the Center for International History, and the Center for Human Rights Documentation and Research.